Microspace. Universe. Lore.

Wun’Tux

Jaipur was the name of a ‘residential’ UCW within the Jai Beta star system. Detailed scans of Jai Beta were part of the first wave of information leaked by Veritas. This information was seized upon and quickly claimed by a convoy of people from Earth’s India who set off in spite of a UN ban on such colonies.

Jai Beta III is a heavily wooded planet with a significant sized habitable zone. The climate within this zone is similar to Southern Europe and well suited to growing crops. Around ten thousand colonists (led by wealthy industrial farmers escaping the Asian Coalition) settled on the world near the start of the Second Age. They were far enough away from the Core to avoid unwanted attention and interference.

Early colony life was difficult; learning to farm an alien landscape had a steep learning curve. But the settlement steadily grew and developed; the ten thousand colonists eager to grasp the opportunity to live away their previously crowded existences needed a lot of food and had the incentive to grow it.
Jaipur grew in both population and stature throughout the Second Age. It became the terminus in a black market trade route – freighters would bring luxury and consumer goods to Jaipur in exchanged for food and crops which could then be sold on to more industrial colonies. The ruling council hired a small mercenary troop to protect the world for opportunistic raiders and pirates and all seemed well.

This charmed existence didn’t last, however. A Wun’Tux scouting party found the colony at the dawn of the Third Age. Although chased off by the local mercenary guard, the BroodClan soon returned in force. Jaipur’s protectors were quickly routed and the colony was laid bare for the slavers to pick clean. The Wun’Tux had no use for the planet itself – they abducted the majority of the population to make into slaves and left the old and weak to die. They burned crops and destroyed buildings. The destruction and chaos was discovered by a regular trader, the ISS Kiwako, and reported to the UN. There was little sympathy within the Core worlds, however. Instead there was a general feeling of ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’.

BroodClan Kirios make their home in a string of colonies and holdings at the edge of human space. They are a new BroodClan under high pressure to grow; this pressure led to their unsuccessful attempt to starve out and conquer the Asian Coalition colony at Ermina III . Following their failure they quickly and retreated back behind their borders to prepare their next move.

The Bastion is inferior to the Clanship in speed, armour and weaponry and costs 1.5 times the price to construct. On the surface, it is a poor choice of investment. And yet in recent times it has been at the centre of several Wun’Tux military victories.

Wun’Tux BroodClans traditionally fought small-scale engagements with formations of their sturdy capital ships; they could only deploy Twinfangs from their largest, most valuable ships and saved such for large scale engagements (like their invasion of Illayko territory). Their fatal meeting with humankind changed all of that.

In the beginning, the old tactics of the Wun’Tux were enough – early human explorers were unable to breach the armour of their opponents with fighter or capital-ship weaponry. As technology and tactics advanced, new options presented themselves with rockets, missiles and other explosives – including those fitted to fightercraft. The majority of Wun’Tux raiding parties operated without fighter cover of their own and found themselves extremely vulnerable to human squadrons, first and foremost Americans out of Highpoint.

The Bastion was rushed into production by BroodClan Xylos. Xylos were one of the largest and most dangerous of the BroodClans but even they could not afford to have a carrier in every place at every moment. The Bastion was designed loosely around the frame of the Clanship but modernised and updated. The most important addition came to the craft’s aft; an external fighter rack.

In the most simple sense, the Bastion allows cheap deployment of fightercraft to smaller engagements. It helped to level the playing field against human forces and beyond. More enterprising BroodClans found increasingly intelligent uses for the ship, e.g. when BroodClan Soulfront used the ships to successfully destroy USS Ranger in a coordinated ambush.

The Bastion is a valuable addition to any Wun’Tux raiding party but has obvious flaws. It is slower to manovere and the crews are generally less battle-ready when compared to their Clanship counterparts. The Clanship has an impressive covering of durillium armour plate, even in percieved ‘weak’ areas; the Bastion has gaps in the armour plate, leaving it open to opportunistic damage. The biggest weakness is around the fighter racks – even minor damage can make the equipment un-usable and rob a roving Wun’Tux group of fighter cover until repair.

With their razor-sharp claws and alarming alacrity, the Wun’Tux are formidable enough opponents without augmentation. Their armoured Planewalkers only serve to make them more ferocious and intimidating.

The Planewalkers look ungainly and awkward at first glance. Their odd angles and forward tilt give the impression the machine might tumble forward at any moment. But the Wun’Tux engineers are far from careless; the poise is maintained by a unique system of gyroscope-like devices, the centre of gravity so easily manipulated as to give the Planewalker a shocking straight-line speed.

The ‘walkers are typically used to defend valuable locations (e.g. durillium mines) and to assault hardened enemy targets; the Wun’Tux are aware of the terror the sight of one can spark, however, and are not shy in using them to keep unruly slaves in line. BroodClans are not shy of using the armour against other Wun’Tux, either; the ‘walkers often feature in the frequent bouts of Wun’Tux infighting.

Planewalkers are usually piloted by the second-born of a brood; it is a position of respect and relative protection compared to third-born and below who tend to be deployed as foot soldiers. These walker pilots are talented but prone to arrogance and overestimation of their skills.

Their ‘Shredder’ cannons inflict devastating damage on organic and lightly armoured targets, especially at short range. Their thick armour enables them to survive sustained exposure on the front lines. Their main vulnerability is from the air, although airborne attackers have their best chance of hitting a Planewalker if it is standing still; they are difficult targets when moving at full speed. The USEF purposefully struck at defending walkers from orbit in preparation for the battle at Dronta VIII.

The ‘Voidrunners’ (a group of ex-slaves involved in a guerilla war against the reptiles) have a way of disabling the gyro-stabilisers with a well-placed Improvised Explosive Device. This causes the ‘walker to malfunction, lose balance and often come crashing to the ground. This method, to the relief of Wun’Tux everywhere, not widely known.

It is against Planewalkers that the Blackmane X-MM made its name; within the tight confines or an urban sprawl, the human mechs were able to evade the Wun’Tux’s shredder cannons and close in for the kill. This remains one of the rare occasions on which Planewalkers were bested by another mech.